Live coverage: SpaceX’s next Falcon 9 moved to launch pad for hotfire test

Soaring into orbit in a rare middle-of-the-night launch from French Guiana, an Ariane 5 rocket took off at 0520 GMT (12:20 a.m. EST) Wednesday with a Eutelsat communications satellite to boost television capacity ahead of the Rio Olympics.

NASA civil servants and the agency’s contractor work force are bracing for high winds and rain from Hurricane Dorian, securing rocket stages, spacecraft assembly areas and even hauling a 6.7-million-pound mobile launch tower, designed for the huge rocket being built for the Artemis moon program, back to the cavernous Vehicle Assembly Building for safekeeping.

Elon Musk’s space transport company — chartered with a long-term goal of colonizing Mars — plans to send the first commercial mission to the red planet as soon as 2018, SpaceX announced Wednesday.